


Noise

by Eatgreass



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Idk man wilde is Like Me and we don't know what that means, Mild Hurt/Comfort, adhd carter and ???? wilde solidarity, anyway, everything is Loud and wilde Does Not like that, no beta minimal editing im tired, pun crimes :), wilde has sensory overload but its ok because I give him a nice conversation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 16:21:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29210292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eatgreass/pseuds/Eatgreass
Summary: Me, slapping fictional oscar wilde: This boy can fit so much projection in him.
Relationships: Zolf Smith & Oscar Wilde
Comments: 12
Kudos: 24





	Noise

Wilde drummed his fingers on the desk. Up, down, up, down, up, down. Everything was so  _ loud.  _ He could hear the rain against the windows and Zolf in the kitchen and Carter and Barnes sword fighting in the courtyard and the fan and the papers and the scritch-scratch of his pen and the lamplight buzzing and the fire crackling. It was all so  _ loud,  _ and Wilde gritted his teeth and resisted the urge to cover his ears and cry. Perhaps it was time for something other than work, right now. Yes. Take exactly ten minutes, and he would be back, fine and dandy.  __

_ Lay the pyre, play the lyre,  _ he thought. That was easy enough. He could do another, more wordplay to forget it. And a lyre was too close to Nero in Rome, too close to Hamid and Sasha and Azu and Grizzop.  _ Ring with times, ting with rhymes,  _ he thought, and didn’t even notice his eyes had squeezed themselves shut, thinking of all the magic he used to be able to do.  _ Another one,  _ he thought,  _ might fix my mind for the rest of the work.  _

_ Magic and tragic,  _ he thought.  _ Magic takes, and tragic makes,  _ letting out a soft snort at his own drama. Words could bring him back to where he could softly analyze Curies assumptions, making Harlequin notes in ink as red as the cards. 

But it was  _ so loud.  _

Wilde heard too much all at once, and it made him feel like a church bell was residing in his ear. _ Leave the church, cleave and lurch.  _ That one wasn’t nearly as good as the ones before it, and all it did was remind him of the way his face had been cleaved in two, the furious day Zolf had his last argument with the sea god Poseidon, and all-  _ all  _ of the pain they had gone through. Involuntarily, he covered his ears, trying to block out the world. Too much, too much,  _ too much.  _

Okay. Wilde stood up, stretched three times, and sat back down.  _ Lost times…? No. The inverse of that was just tossed limes.  _ Alright. He could make it through another- Wilde checked his watch- four hours. If Zolf didn’t call him down for dinner in that time, well.. Okay, Wilde probably would have forgotten about everything but the work by then. He was a realist, after all. 

_ Cadaver full of pins, Palaver full of sins.  _ That reminded him of the one time he’d tried to introduce Zolf to Mary Shelley, claiming she was a renowned romance writer. (She was. It wasn’t  _ her  _ fault that the general public had latched onto Frankenstein rather than, say, Valperga as her titular novel.) Zolf had wrinkled his nose and said that she wrote books that were too close to the real world, which spurred a discussion about the Campbell novel inspired by Bertie, which led to cold soup for dinner. 

Noise conquered, Wilde went back to the papers. 

That was, of course, until the words started to blur together underneath his pen. Damn. That wasn’t going to be productive at all. 

With a sigh, he rubbed his eyes and stood up. The floor creaked, and he winced, looking at his watch. It was ten at night. 

“Zolf?”

“Yes?” he heard from downstairs. 

“Why didn’t you call me down for dinner?” 

Zolf blinked. “I did.”

“I didn’t hear you.”

“I almost came up to get you-”

“Why didn’t you?” asked Wilde. 

“Carter said it might be loud, whatever that means. He seemed to know what he was talking about, so I let it go.”

Wilde’s mind took a minute to catch up to his mouth. “Oh… yes. I have talked with him about that.”

“So…”

Wilde stared down at Zolf. “So, what?”

“So was it that?”

“Oh. No. I just forgot.” 

Zolf looked exponentially more frustrated. “I knew I shouldn’t have listened to  _ Carter,  _ that-”

“He was probably right,” said Wilde, cutting Zolf off. “Sometimes it gets too loud.”

“Ah,” said Zolf. “Right.” He paused. “And that means…?”

“I hear everything, all at once, pounding into my head. It makes it quite hard to think sometimes.”

Zolf waved a hand. “But magic- noise-  _ whatever,  _ that’s your thing, right?”

“Well, hope, love, and the power of friendship are your things, right? Don’t you get tired of that?”

“First of all, it’s not  _ ‘hope, love, and the power of friendship,’ it’s-” _

Wilde smiled, feeling like at least for now, the background noise had quieted down. “But you can’t channel hope all the time, right? Otherwise you burn out.”

“Right,” said Zolf. “I’m not going to stop forcing you to rest if I don’t see you for a week, though.”

Wilde laughed. “By all means, continue. Although if you don’t see me for a  _ week,  _ I think we have some bigger -and bluer- issues.” 

Zolf was quiet for a minute. “You could’ve waited on the world-is-ending jokes until after dinner. 

“I’m sorry,” said Wilde. “It was in poor taste.”

Zolf looked up “You  _ bastard.  _ That wasn’t even a good one.”

“I’ll swallow my words if need be, Mr. Smith,” said Wilde. 

Zolf didn’t even get angry at that one. “It’s taking a toll on you, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“You've given me two puns, neither of them any good. I can measure your mental state by the quality of the puns.”

“Why, I didn’t know you cared,” said Wilde. “What else is there? Is Barnes infected? Sasha’s back? What miracle is it now?”

“How are you doing?” asked Zolf, unresponsive to the barbs.

Wilde stared, but Zolf didn’t back down. Finally, Wilde deflated, all the energy leaving his body. “Alright. Yeah, It’s been a lot.”

“Do you need a break?” asked Zolf. “Because I can tell Curie to piss off, that you’re more important than whatever she needs done. I’m not going to let you kill yourself for this. So be honest-” Zolf stepped in front of Wilde- “How are you doing?”

Wilde was quiet for a minute, thinking. “I’m managing it, it’s just- I’m doing it piecemeal.”

Zolf smacked the other man with  _ When Passions Collide  _ in response. 

_ Lay the pyre, play the lyre,  _

_ And Rome burns in your wake.  _

_ You look like I’m a lover with such words I won’t forsake.  _

_ See the clock, it ticks and tocks, and you thought that you had won?  _

_ An emperor, the temperature, the flames burn like the sun.  _

_ I’m singing bright, I’m bringing sight,  _

_ Music isn’t always grace.  _

_ Sparks fill up my throat and my bloody guilt effaced.  _

_ Envy’s my vice, my voice is ice, but I’m burning like a saint.  _

_ I’ll hold the note until the cross is splattered red-brown with the paint.  _

_ The light is bleeding, blight is leading _

_ Us on to our deaths.  _

_ My chest is tight, so hollow I can barely take a breath.  _

_ I’ll take your head, I’ll stake your head on this damn bloody pike  _

_ And bleed until the life I live is hazy and dreamlike.  _

_ We lost the fight, the frost is light, _

_ I don’t believe the snow.  _

_ I cannot trust my eyes right now, whatever they may show.  _

_ I was alone, and I watched rome, it burned to bits before my gaze _

_ And the snow that falls is just the cruel embers from that blaze _

_ It’s death's sweet song, and Seth’s red dawn, _

_ The war blades cut my throat _

_ Who knew my silver-wolf tongue would encourage the garrote?  _

_ So I’ll sing to you, this thing for you, I haven’t seen you since _

_ Rome is now in ruins and of death I am convinced.  _

**Author's Note:**

> Writing Wilde is really just me finding excuses to be clever in my writing, *looks at all my hamlet fanfiction* boy I really have a type of comfort characters. 
> 
> So fun fact about the song, I actually had it mostly done and I already had the chords out, I just needed to streamline one more verse, which, while re-reading it, it reminded me of rqg, so I finally finished the verse (The second verse was the one I wrote after making the rqg connection) I guess that song will be on my youtube at some point, then.  
> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7nJHCleXHYc


End file.
